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Foundations
of Distance Education
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Distance Education Today
The "digital
revolution" is having a major impact on distance education today.
Distance education, particularly e-learning, has experienced major growth
in the last five years. Virtual universities and new for-profit ventures
of well-known academic institutions jumped on the distance education bandwagon
to launch new online distance education programs.
However the "dot-com" sector hit economic hard times in late 2000. Several promising new distance education start-ups go out of business:
- U.S. Open University announced closure (June 2002)
- Arizona Learning Systems (closed by legislature August 2002)
- NYU Online (closed 2001)
- DU Extended Learning Program (closed 2001)
- Virtual
Temple (closed July 2001)
The National
Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported the following statistics
on Distance Education for the 1997-98 academic year (NCES, 1999):
- The number of distance education degree programs in the US increased by 72% from the 1994-1995 survey
- About 1/3 of the nation's 2 and 4 year institutions of higher education offered distance education courses
- An estimated 54,470 different distance education courses were offered, most (49,690 were college-level, credit granting courses)
- Enrollments
in distance education courses was estimated at 1,661,100